Did the 4/7/10 AE xp change go too far?

Problem is, I am noticing sharply reduced ticket and inf rewards on a variety of missions that do not even feature allies, which makes me wonder whether this is unintentionally nerfing the rewards of all missions that even feature hostages.

This evening, I played "Freakout" by 3Deviant, not sure what the number is, on a team. The arc is story based and is intended to be a team challenge, with large ambushes and multiple archvillains in each mission. There are also a fairly large number of hostages in each mission, but no actual allies. Rewards when played were noticeably substandard compared to previous runs of the story. With the exception of a couple of the archvillains, the enemies fought in the arc are standard, and include Freakshows, Family, Crey, Council, and Arachnos. All seemed to be giving less than a quarter of full rewards.

One possible explanation would seem to be that the presence of the hostages, as non-combat characters, is invoking the nerf. There are no allies in any of these missions.

I use friendly and non-combat mobs in a variety of ways. In some, friendly ambushes spawn to bestow congratulations on the players when a foe has been defeated, for story reasons. In another, friendly patrols spawn when objectives are completed to depict a revolt in a prison camp. Some of my allies are deliberately weak but combative, meant to be defeated rather than helpful, because that's part of the story. I've added friendly bosses to depict characters making speeches to the player. None of these allies are expected to follow players passing out buffs, and combat-effective allies already eroded rewards, potentially to zero, by the damage they did. I am going to have to test each of these scenarios, but if hostages are invoking the code here they likely are too. I already know the patrol spawning mission is affected, even if the patrols do not buff the players and are not controlled by them.

If every hostage, friendly, or non-combat NPC is invoking this code regardless of their combat ability, it seems to have misfired and is interfering with story telling as well as exploits. If this is the case I'd ask this to be rolled back.

This would appear to have broken three quarters of the available story telling tools in AE.

No. I'm still testing, but what counts vs what doesn't count is strange:

• Ally objectives count
• Escort objectives count
• Release Captive objectives count
• Defend an Object objectives count
  
• Allied patrols do not count.
• Allies in a "battle" objective do not count.
• Allied bosses do not count.

ah, well i havent done any super detailed testing yet, even so, this is still a large portion of the objectives

how does a defend object reduce xp anyway? its an object that does nothing

i think this was a more "blanket" fix that didnt work properly, i could see something else coming to fix this in another couple weeks or with i17

captives, escorts, and defend objects should not count to the reduced xp, while battles, ally bosses, ally anything else that actually fights should reduce xp

But, but! This is a good change because it is going to stop the exploiting!

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

this would be the objective IF they only made rewards reduced for allies that actually participated in battle

but instead they nerfed captives, defend objects, and escorts all 3 of which the ally in it is nothing more than a placeholder

patrols, battles, and ally boss spawns are unaffected by this so it wont really be stopping the use of buffing allies (they wont directly buff you, but you can make a group of baddies that just uses the AoE buffs and you sit under them)

Minor note but escorts can be made to fight alongside you as you escort them.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

true, but if the escort was to betray you, you wouldnt want to be fighting some overpowered AV that mezzed you so bad you couldnt do anything, or self buffed enough that it would be nearly unkillable, and if it did die somehow, then you would fail the mish

escorts i guess should be nerfed some in that case, but prolly 7 out of 10 times they are non-combat unless it was story critical (the other portion of the time)

i still dont see how captives and defend objects fall into the "nerf" category though since captives are noncombat and are essentially placeholders and defend objects can be killed but they dont do anything other than sit there

This is even stranger. Whatever it is, it seems to be not working as intended: it does not match the intent stated in the patch note, nor does it confine itself to the allies that might be considered an exploit.

My personal style in AE arcs involves getting the text needed to follow the story in front of all the players. Reliance on mission briefings, clues, and other less obvious text results in a random sequence of instructions --- go here, defeat this, collect that --- that seems to make no sense to anyone but the team leader. I try to put all of my story into NPC chatter of some sort. This means using a lot of allies, patrols, and unessential boss fights, often set to single.

I think Mac was saying to be careful what you wish for.

honestly, i havent hardly touched AE in months because i prefer running normal content to get drops (trying more for purples, which are unattainable in AE by any means), therefore tickets are fairly useless to me

Dev's Choice missions set to Standard Rewards will give the same chance at Purples as regular content (at level 47+). About half the Purple drops I've ever gotten I've gotten that way, though I don't see myself playing much more AE at this point.

They continue to remove incentive from playing AE missions. While I thoroughly enjoy playing new content, I'm not very motivated to play a random mission that may only reward 1/2 or 1/4 the XP/inf/drops of a normal mission (this even including Dev Choice arcs now).

I approve removing exploits, but if they remove the rewards for playing non-farm content from the AE as well, it removes the reason for the majority of the playerbase to play it, because most people are concerned with, if not solely motivated by drops/XP/inf/rewards.

Well thats too bad Doc. Hope you come back at some point, most of us will still be here I think.

No, they're far from placeholders. I've figured out a way to exploit "Rescue Captive" and "Defend an object" objectives that makes the Ally-objective buffbots look tame: create a faction that consists only of Archvillain-class buffbots, set that faction as the surrounding group for the objective, and set the group alignment to "ally". This gives you up to half a dozen buffbots per captive, who you can then pull spawns towards to defeat.

Broken Voltage (War Mace / Electric Armor Brute) Main Toon

I also tested this. My testing told me that any allied critter or object on the map will reduce the rewards you receive from enemies on the map.

Here's what I did:

I put just one Boss objective set to single/ally on the map. I then opened the entire map first so that I made sure every objective had spawned (if you are not close enough to the ally-type objective for it to spawn on the map, it will not count against the rewards you receive. I then killed something and gave 90% of what I was suppose to receive.

After that, I went nuts and just put two allied patrols on the map. +0 Boss infamy went from ~37k to around 200 and some change...

Obviously they screw something up.